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Percy has no character, properly so called; whereas, that of Portia is very distinctly and faithfully drawn from the outline furnished by Plutarch. Lady Percy's fond upbraidings, and her half playful, half pouting entreaties, scarcely gain her husband's attention. Portia, with true matronly dignity and tenderness, pleads her right to share her husband's thoughts, and proves it too.

I grant I am a woman, but withal,

A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife-
I grant I am a woman, but withal,
A woman well reputed--Cato's daughter.
Think you, I am no stronger than my sex,
Being so father'd and so husbanded?

*

BRUTUS.

You are my true and honorable wife-
As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops.
That visit my sad heart!

Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profession, and in reality the reverse-acting deeds against his nature by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman so fathered and so husbanded." The fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own fortitude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch relates, that on the day on which Cæsar was assassinated, Portia appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her emotion utter a

word which could affect the conspirators. Shakspeare has rendered this circumstance literally.

PORTIA.

I prithee, boy, run to the senate-house,
Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.
Why dost thou stay?

LUCIUS.

To know my errand, madam.

PORTIA.

1 would have had thee there and here again,
Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.

O constancy! be strong upon my side!

Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!

I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.

*

*

* Ah me! how weak a thing

The heart of woman is !-O, I grow faint, &c.

There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not well be dramatized. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time in the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not shake his fortitude but afterwards, in passing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a passion of tears.*

If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have been another Lady Russell; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the Philosophy of Portia, and

* When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock, at the extreme point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the little island of Nisida, and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lazeretto which now deforms it;-deforms it, however, to the fancy only, for the building itself, as it rises from amid the vines, the cypresses, and fig. trees which embosom it, looks beautiful at a distance.

the heroism of her death, certainly mistook the character altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fashion," but took place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by over-wrought and suppressed feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented it ;

BRUTUS.

O, Cassius! I am sick of many griefs!

CASSIUS.

Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.

BRUTUS.

No man bears sorrow better-Portia's dead.

CASSIUS.

Ha!-Portia ?

BRUTUS.

She is dead.

CASSIUS.

How 'scap'd I killing when I crossed you so?

O insupportable and touching loss

Upon what sickness?

BRUTUS.

Impatient of my absence,

And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
Had made themselves so strong-(for with her death
These tidings came)—with this she fell distract,
And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.

So much for woman's philosophy!

MARGARET OF ANJOU.

MALONE has written an essay, to prove from external and internal evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI., were not originally written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,* with considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr. Warbourton, and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism, convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Stevens would not be convinced, and moreover, have contrived, to answer the unanswerable. "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The only arbiter in such a case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery, bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action, and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as Shakspeare alone could have written; -and this is not denied by the most sceptical.t

"The Contention of the two houses of York and Lancaster,” in two parts, supposed by Malone to have been written about 1590.

† I abstain from making any remarks on the character of Joan of Arc, as delineated in the First Part of Henry VI.; first, because I do not in my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare; and secondly, because in representing her according to the vulgar English traditions, as half sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by pleasure and ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature, justice, and common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated the character nobly; but in making Joan the slave of passion, and the victim of love, instead of the victim of patriotism, has com

Among the arguments against the authenticity of these plays, the character of Margaret of Anjou has not been adduced, and yet to those who have studied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters, we are struck at once by the want of family likeness; Shakspeare was not always equal, but he had not two manners, as they say of painters. I discern his hand in particular parts, but I cannot recognise his spirit in the conception of the whole: he may have laid on some of the colors, but the original design has a certain hardness and heaviness, very unlike his usual style. Magaret of Anjou, as exhibited in these tragedies, is a dramatic portrait of considerable truth, and vigor, and consistency--but she is not one of Shakspeare's women. He who knew so well

in what true greatness of spirit consisted-who could excite our respect and sympathy, even for a Lady Macbeth, would never have given us a heroine without a touch of heroism he would not have portrayed a high-hearted woman, struggling unsubdued against the strangest vicissitudes of fortune, meeting reverses and disasters, such as would have broken the most masculine spirit, with unshamitted, I think, a serious error in judgment and feeling; and I cannot sympathize with Madame de Stael's defence of him on this particular point. There was no occasion for this deviation from the truth of things, and from the dignity and spotless purity of the character. This young enthusiast with her religious reveries, her simplicity, and heroisin, her melancholy, her sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly feminine bearing in all her exploits, (for though she so often led the van of battle unshrinking, while death was all round she never struck a blow, nor stained her consecrated sword with blood,—another point in which Schiller has wronged her,)—this heroine and martyr, over whose last moments we shed burning tears of pity and indignation, remains yet to be treated as a dramatic character, and I know but one person capable of doing this.

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